Make More Money with Your Product or Service: From Getting Started to Creating Additional Materials, Online Campaigns, Podcasts, Blogs, Videos, Advertising, PR, and the Social Media

By Gini Graham Scott

MAKE MORE MONEY WITH YOUR PRODUCT OR SERVICE is a step-by-step guide to making money from your products, services and any books or programs you develop based on them. It includes much the same information as MAKE MORE MONEY FROM YOUR BOOK, with a focus on marketing products or services.

Part I deals with getting started. It covers:

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Changemakers Publishing
• Release date: Feb 23, 2018
• ISBN: 9781947466876

Gini Graham Scott

Gini Graham Scott, Ph.D., CEO of Changemakers Publishing and Writing, is an internationally known writer, speaker, and workshop leader. She has published over 50 books with major publishers on various topics and has written over 3 dozen children's books. Her published children's books include Katy's Bow, Scratches, The Crazy Critters First Visit, and Where's the Avocado? published by Black Rose Writing. She has published 8 children's books through her company Changemakers Kids and is a member of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. She does workshops on self-publishing and creativity. She also helps clients write books as a ghostwriter and self-publish or find publishers and agents. Her websites are www.changemakerspublishgandwriting.com and www.ginigrahamscott.com.

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PART I: GETTING STARTED

INTRODUCTION

If you want to make more money from your product or service you need to build awareness and credibility.  Also, you can create spin-off products, services, and programs to help you make even more. 

Whether you are selling a product or service, and whether your primary market is through face-to-face or through online sales, you can build your income with an effective marketing, sales, and promotion campaign. You can do it yourself or bring in assistants and affiliates to help your campaign. 

Here are 10 ways to help you make more money from your product or service by developing related books and programs, getting more attention from the social and traditional media, and by marketing these materials effectively.  This list will give you a general idea of the many things you can do to make more money.  Then, choose among them for what you want to do and prioritize which ones you want to do first.  Make More Money with Your Product or Service provides even more suggestions and describes how to implement these ideas to increase your income.

1) Create additional programs and products based on your product or service, such as workshops, seminars, webinars, CD and DVD packages, and consulting packages, which you can use to promote your product or service as well as gain additional sales.

2) Put on programs for local groups and contact the local press, and gradually develop a track record and video of what you are doing, so you can gain interest from speaking bureaus, meeting planners. 

3) Get reviews from product reviewers on Amazon, independent product reviewers and bloggers, and reviewers for magazines, newspapers, and Internet publications.  Then, use the good reviews in your promotional and marketing copy.

4) Create short videos to promote your product or service, as well as create a program on video which you can sell.

5) Create a website to feature your product, services, and blogs.  Put your blogs on your website, so when people are drawn to your blog, they also see your website.  Create blogs of about 500-700 words at least once a week, but instead of pitching your products or services, talk about a related subject where you give people valuable information that can help them in their daily life.  For example, if your product deals with education, write about trends in education; if your service deals with health, comment on new developments in health.

6) Develop an online sales and marketing program to promote and sell your products, services, and other programs.  While you can use your website for this purpose, another effective approach is to create an online sales campaign which includes a squeeze or landing page, a free gift, such as a product sample or article on advice related to your service, and a sales page, where you present your offer. Other pages might promote a webinar or other materials based on one or your products or services.

7) Publish a book related to your products or services on multiple platforms, including ebooks on different formats, such as Kindle, and Smashwords.  Plus you can make it available through many platforms, such as Scribd and GoodReads.

8) Actively promote your product, service, or book related to them on the social media, including Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.  Create frequent posts about your product, service, book, or related activities, such as announcing when you are presenting a webinar.  You can also post sales pages and promotional videos on Facebook, as well as links to your squeeze page.  Join groups of individuals who might be interested in the type of products or services you offer and post there, though provide information and advice in your posts, not just promotional and marketing information.  That way, you become part of the conversation and establish your credibility, which will help people become interested in your products or services.

9) Contact reporters who are doing stories on your industry to present yourself as an expert who they might quote in a story in return for mentioning your products or services or your website.  You can work with various services that connect reporters to experts on a particular subject.

10) Contact the traditional media about your products or services if you can tie what you are doing to something in the news; then you become an authority who is knowledgeable about that topic, and the media might want to include you in the story.

11) Go to business referral, networking, and Meetup groups in your area that might have an interest in your products or services, though some groups limit memberships to one person in a particularly industry.  Typically, you briefly describe what you are doing and what you are looking for, and you can make a presentation of about 7-10 minutes to these groups after you are a member for a while.

Plus there are still other things you can do.  You will see more information on these different strategies in the following chapters of Make More Money with Your Product or Service, along with other ways to make money from your products or services and any programs you develop based on them.

CHAPTER 1: SETTING YOUR GOALS FOR MONETIZING YOUR PRODUCTS OR SERVICES

Today, it can help you sell your products or services if you create an online presence, and a short book or booklet to help prospective clients understand what you do or take some initial steps themselves can help you build awareness and credibility leading to more sales.  These steps will also help you build your platform, which will help you better sell additional products and services as you expand what you do. 

You can use these tools wherever you are in creating your brand and sales platform.

As a first step, assess where you are now.

1) You are developing your products or services.

2) You are starting a new company and need to create your branding.

3) You have a book or booklets to self-publish.

4) You have already published your book or booklet and want to use it to get more sales.

5) A combination of the above.

Wherever you are in the process, you can to make more money from your products or services.  Importantly, have a single goal or focus for each monetizing approach, so you can target the same market and use your marketing and sales materials to support that goal.  Otherwise if you have products or services targeted to different audiences, you will scatter your efforts at sales, promotion, workshops, and other activities, and confuse your audience about what you are doing. 

So pick one product, service, or series of related products or services to start, so you concentrate your efforts on a single goal or target.  By aiming all of your shots at a single target, you are more likely to hit it or get closer to a bullseye than if you aim at a second or multiple targets.

Next, determine which goal to focus on.  If you have two or more product lines or services, choose one to start.  Take into consideration what are you most passionate about and what you think has the most potential for a paying market. 

Ideally, both elements will come together, so the money will follow in doing what you love.  But sometimes what you love isn’t very marketable, unless you can develop a way to market and get money for it. 

For example, suppose you love hiking in the mountains, have created some fun hats for hikers to wear, have written a memoir about your journey, and work at a health clinic that offers workshops on new ways to lose weight and get healthy.  Maybe you could incorporate tips on losing weight and getting healthy into a booklet aimed at hikers, since you have to stay fit for these long hikes. You can include photos of the hats in the beginning of each chapter to increase interest in the hats.  This way all elements of the book combine to help you get more clients for your workshop and increase sales of both the book and the hats.

But suppose your topics don’t really go together.  Then, think of how you might turn your passion into something with broad appeal – such as incorporating your experiences in hiking with a guide for other hikers on how to have a successful hiking experience or great trails for hiking in the area. Or choose the products or services that you think have the most potential for a particular paying market.  Think in terms of what will sell the most and build your marketing program around that.

To get started, do the following exercise.  Ask yourself these questions and write down the answers:

1) What product or service am I most passionate about?

2) What product or service has the most potential for a paying market?

3) How can I make what I am most passionate about into a product or service that will appeal to a broad market?

4) Based on my answers to the previous questions, what is my goal for developing this product or service?  What is my goal for creating a marketing campaign to increase awareness and my credibility as a supplier of this product or provider of this service?  What do I want to focus on promoting and selling, which will have the most chances for success in making money?

Once you have your goal, you are ready to start working on turning this into a source of added income, beyond just selling the products or services themselves.

CHAPTER 2: BUILDING OTHER INCOME SOURCES FROM YOUR PRODUCTS OR SERVICES

No matter the size or your company or the number of products and services, you can develop other ways to increase your income.  For example, consider writing articles and blogs to increase traffic to your website as well as increase your credibility.  Then, you can turn those articles or blogs into a book by combining 10 or more of them together, adding a table of contents, and a cover.  Anything you do will help build your platform – your visibility in your field, which will help you sell more products or get more clients for your services.

For example, whether you sell or give away your book or a small sampling of your product or service, it helps to build both awareness and your authority. In effect, you are developing a branding campaign, which will help increase your income from various sources. At the same time, having a series of articles, blogs, or published book can help you attract interest to whatever else you are doing to build your brand and monetize your message.  So all these efforts combine together to create a more successful YOU!

As first step to gaining more customers, clients, or income from your products and services, consider the different possibilities.  You won’t have time to do everything – though you can expand your efforts by delegating or outsourcing certain activities, especially the ones that you don’t like or take time away from what you most want to do. 

Here’s a list of the different possibilities to consider.  I’ll discuss what to do about each of these paths to growing your income in subsequent chapters.

Consider the following activities as different ways to promote awareness about you and your products or services.  In this way, you are building and promoting your brand and using it to increase your income from different sources.  Then, too, whatever you do to increase your income can help promote and build your brand, while promoting and building it can help you earn more.

You might think of this relationship as illustrated in the diagram below:

Earning Income from Your Products and Services

Earning Income from Your Products and Services

Building and Promoting Your Brand and Your Products and Services

Building and Promoting Your Brand and Your Products and Services

Here are some of the related activities you can engage in to promote your brand or particular products and services.

Creating and publishing articles and blogs

Creating videos for YouTube, Vimeo, or other platforms

Putting on webinars or teleseminars

Creating and broadcasting podcasts

Putting on workshops and seminars

Engaging in joint ventures with individuals with related or complementary products, services, programs, or books

Engaging in interviews or guest appearances on radio or TV shows

Sending out press releases to the local and national press

Creating squeeze and sales pages to sell your products or services

Coaching to help others acquire your skills

Turning a printed book on a subject related to your products and services into an ebook – or turning your ebook into a printed book

Developing additional products or services

Using email blasts or direct mail to promote your products or services

Participating in panels

Volunteering at trade shows, exhibits, or other events

Joining and participating in organizations in your field or in business generally, such as in your local Chamber of Commerce.

And more – whatever else you think of that can help build and promote your brand and your products or services and earn you money.

CHAPTER 3: WORKING WITH AFFILIATES

A great way to earn money as well as build your credibility and an audience is by finding affiliates you can team up with.  Affiliates are someone with a product, service, or program you like, where you can get a commission for promoting what they are selling, when someone you refer to them buys that product, service, or program.  An affiliate arrangement can be an ideal approach to use even before you have your own products, services. It can be a way to gain experience in marketing, sales, and promotion you can apply to your own products and services.

While anyone can become an affiliate for anything, select affiliates with a product, service, or program in your own field.  Then, you can tie yourself and your products or services to your promotion for your affiliate. 

Importantly, the affiliate should complement whatever you are selling or plan to sell, and not be a direct competitor.  Also, affiliates should have an already established platform, so you can build on their success and reputation.  Moreover, you should get a large-enough commission for your referral (at least 10%, preferably 20-25%), depending on how much effort you are putting into making referrals.  If you are just referring someone by name, 10% is a reasonable amount; but if you are creating a promotional page, commonly known as a squeeze page to pitch the affiliate’s offering, 20-25% is a more typical commission.

For example, if you plan to sell pet products, a company that sells other types of pet products would be ideal.  If you are providing consulting on health and fitness, a company selling health products might be a good fit for you.

One way to do any marketing and sales is to set up a squeeze page, which is a free standing page or a page on your website, where you feature the offer describing why this is such a great product, service, subscription, or program.  Sometimes you will get the copy from your affiliate along with a code your referrals can use or which you put on your own site.  This way your affiliate knows you are making the referral in order to pay you a commission.

However you set up the offer, design your referral page, so you capture the person’s email.  Then, you can later pitch your own products or services, and as you add new products or services, you can let the person with that email know.  Another effective online sales approach is to offer the prospect a free gift of your own, such as an article, small sample of your product, or short video with tips related to your service, which can result in immediate sales, as well as capture the person’s email.  To capture the email, ask the visitors to your site to fill in a form with their email, so you can send them their free gift.

If you are writing copy for what you are offering, use bullet points to highlight the main topics and benefits to the individual.  As possible, offer special savings for acting now, such as a lower price special for buying it now. 

There are some tried and true methods for writing these squeeze pages, so they are very compelling according to online marketing specialists.  One method is to use a short page with an image, headline, and short copy highlighting the main benefits of the program and urge the person to sign up now to get a discount or free gift.  Another method is to use a longer sales pitch where you repeat the offer several times but in slightly different ways, and after each pitch, you include a buy button, so the prospect can immediately go to a buy page for your product or service or an affiliate's product or service.  Each pitch builds up the appeal and need for the offer followed by the buy button, followed by more and different information making the offer more enticing, so the individual will keep reading and become more and more convinced, until he or she finally buys. 

The approach is like luring in a fish with a colorful lure, so the fish gets closer and closer with each enticement, until it finally snaps its teeth around the hook.  Or in this case, instead of being cooked, he or she will enjoy your product or service. 

Meanwhile, whether or not you immediately sell your product or service, you are using it as a lure to offer related products or services.  Then, if the prospect has a good experience with the free gift offered as bait, he or she will be more responsive to your pitch for whatever you are selling, which you can make since you now have gotten that person’s e-mail.  Plus you have increased your name recognition in the field, because of your association with a more well-known person.  Additionally you may sell some of your own products or services, when offering something which is related and has a wide appeal, which can increase the appeal of your own offerings.  After all, by being associated with something that is very popular and powerful, you gain some of that appeal.

Eventually, it’s better to use a marketing approach to attract customers for your own products and services.  Then you are not just getting a commission for marketing someone else’s materials.  But before then, an affiliate program is a good way to build your income, reputation, brand, and association with your name and company, and you can gain some sales, too.

CHAPTER 4: BUILDING YOUR NICHE

Think about the target audience or audiences for your product and services by thinking about demographics (age, sex, educational level, location) and interests, and focus on promoting your products and services in that arena.  This way you will direct your appeal to the target market for that niche, so your efforts will be more effective and efficient than if you try to appeal to everyone.

Preferably, pick one niche to start, and then you can expand to one or two other niches.  It’s best not to appeal to more than that number, since you will scatter your efforts like a shotgun shooting multiple pellets, rather than using revolver that hits the target more powerfully when you have the correct aim.

To choose your niche, consider who are the major buyers for similar products or services.  There are pre-existing markets for many of these niches, and that can help your marketing efforts if your products or services falls within an already established niche.  In the event your product or service falls in two or more niches, emphasize the features to appeal to that market.

For example, if your product is for outdoors enthusiasts going on hikes and hunting, emphasize the hikes to appeal to hikers; emphasize the hunting to appeal to hunters.  Pitch your product or service to whatever niches apply.  This promotion of a single product or service to multiple niches is different from having different products or services which appeal to different niches, which scatters your efforts.

Say you have a series of diet drinks and do consulting on losing weight.  Your primarily niche might health clubs.  Other niches would be women interested in weight loss and nutrition.. You might emphasize selling the diet drinks to the health clubs; the consulting services along with the drinks to the women.

One advantage of targeting a pre-existing niche for your products and services is that there is already an established audience in this niche that is receptive to buying multiple products and services on the same subject, as long as you show them a different approach.  By doing so, you are just selling audience members on buying your product or service, not on the concept.  They already know the benefits they might expect, because they have gotten other products and services in this niche.

Additionally, think about how to supplement your product or service with related programs of your own or an affiliate.  Ideally, offer your own products or services for at least $25 and affiliate programs for $50 or more, so you are making enough with each sale.  Then build on an initial sale with additional related products or services, since it is easier to upsell to someone who is already a customer than find new customers.

So think about what else you can do to build your line of products or provide additional services.  Consider, too, the various vehicles that might be used to promote them, such as a blog, YouTube video, posting on Facebook and Twitter, and interviews with the traditional media.  In the long run, it is better to create your own products, services, and programs, rather than looking to affiliates, although you might use affiliate programs in the interim to make money and promote your own products and services.

To expand whatever you are doing now, make a list of the different ways you can help people with your type of products or services.  For example, if you have a line of pet collars, consider other products you might add that appeal to the same type of customers, such as cat toys, hats, and cartoon books with cats.  Or consider topics for workshops in this subject area, such as:

- a workshop on keeping your cat happy and healthy,

- an online webinar on having more fun with your cat,

- a training video on getting your cat to feel comfortable with a move to another place or living with other pets.

If you decide on pitching for an affiliate, obtain or create the promotional materials, so people can sign-up.  Highlight your own products, services, or programs in your promotional materials to build your credibility – and possibly sell some of your own materials, too.  Initially, you might charge an introductory price for a first purchase offer a discount for those opting to buy before a certain date.

Also, develop any workshop, seminar, webinar, or training videos as needed.  You can presell these programs to determine if there is a market; then quickly put together the materials you are selling.  Or create these materials in advance.  You can keep your costs down by creating these materials yourself, using photos from low-cost stock photo houses like the Dollar Photo Club (www.dollarphotoclub.com), and hiring film and video students at local schools to film and edit a simple video of you talking.  Or project the slides you have created in a webinar service like GotoMeeting (www.gotomeeting.com) as you talk. 

CHAPTER 5: CREATING YOUR PRODUCTS

Creating additional products can help you both sell your original product or service and more specialized products for those who want to more.  These products can take the form of workshops, seminars, webinars, training videos, subscriptions, consulting packages, or other services that build on your product.  I'll be referring to them collectively as products, which can take multiple forms, from tangible and physical products to digital merchandise available online.

A first step is deciding what you want to sell in addition to your original product or service, and then how to best package it.  As an example, say you are selling some nutritional products.  You might create a weight loss program with workshops and seminars and consulting on how to stay on a diet program. 

Also consider packaging products or services together that people commonly ask about, and providing a discount for buying the package.  For example, besides charging on an hourly basis for consulting with a client, create a package which reflects what people commonly ask you about.  Figure out how many hours you need to provide that service and put a price on your initial consulting arrangement – possibly charge even less than usual to get a client started in working with you.  For example, if you charge $125 an hour and a typical initial consultation is for 2 hours, you might have an introductory $195 consulting package and list what it includes (ie: an introductory 1 ½ hour session, two follow-up calls for 30 minutes each, and a recording of your session).

The particular type of product you choose will affect how you market it, such as whether it’s a tangible product, like a workbook or DVD; a digital product, like a video or workshop to view online or download; or a seminar or workshop that has to be presented to a live audience.

Moreover, some products can be sold in multiple channels, such as a workshop or seminar based on your product or service.  The first sales venue might be a face-to-face event in a physical location, such as a conference room or private home.  Then, if you make an audio recording or videotape the session, you have a product you can sell on CDs, DVDs, or online.  Should you do a series of workshops, you could turn this into a subscription program.  Still another possibility is to create a workbook to go along with your product.  Or perhaps your product lends itself to other products, such as posters, calendars, postcards, and greeting cards, or even a game based on the steps to reach the goal involved in using your product, such as losing a certain number of pounds through your nutritional supplements or diet program.

So take some time to consider what types of products best fit with your current line of products or services, and make a list of the products you might create to sell.  Also, consider how you might use these products to sell your other products or services (for example, you can sell your nutritional supplements at a workshop or when you offer this program online).  At the same time, your workshop or seminar adds to your credentials for marketing these other products. 

Besides any physical products or services you have to deliver personally, think about how you can make your products or services available online through Internet marketing, or how you can create online versions, since that opens you up to selling worldwide as well as making sales when you are not present. Often with such programs, you can repurpose the content, so you can use it in multiple ways. 

To this end, some products to start with to increase your sales and profits are these:

1) a workbook, which can be